I stumbled into this through, of all places, Wil Wheaton‘s blog. You remember him: Wesley Crusher from ST:TNG (or whatever the acronym is). Not only do I admire the sentiment, but I admire the artistry as well. Check it out.
http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/04/alot-is-better-than-you-at-everything.html
Apparently a million people follow this blog. I’m so behind the times . . .
(FYI: In case you access my blog via rss feed or subscription, I’ve changed my settings so you just get a summary in the feed/e-mail. Click on the link to go to my blog site and read the whole post.)
My elbow started hurting a couple of weeks ago. It didn’t surprise me too much. I keep pretending I’m trying to get into shape and I figured I strained something lifting my 20-pound weights. But by bedtime, my elbow had blown up like someone had inserted a half-filled water balloon under my skin. By the next morning, the slightest bend or twist shot bullets of agony up my arm.
I was unhappy.
It was Sunday. I wasn’t dying, or even bleeding, so I waited until Monday to see the doctor rather than spend my football-watching time in emergency. Monday morning, the doctor glanced at my elbow, asked a couple of questions with obvious disinterest, and said, “You have ulnar sjeoigowhihwei.” Or something that made equal sense.
She added, firmly, “You’ve got to stop what you’re doing.”
Stop what? Sitting in her office? Surreptitiously scratching my armpit? Watching “Being Human” for too many hours in a row?
But I knew what she meant. Stop driving. Stop lifting weights. STOP USING THE COMPUTER.
How about I stop trying to breathe, too?
She gave me some anti-inflammatories, which helped, and then I stopped what I was doing. For three whole days, I let others do the driving, cooking, and weight-lifting. I compromised with the computer thing by typing left-handed.
Heres me, typeing left=hasded.
Typos aside, it turns out my right hand is the better speller. More than once, I stopped and stared at a freshly typed word, thinking, “That can’t be right.” Or “Is there one L or two in ‘peanut butter’?”
It wasn’t until I let my right hand rest on the keyboard that the correct spelling came to me. I’m not kidding! Someone should do a study.
After a week or so of dedicated left-handedness, my left arm started to hurt. (You saw that coming, didn’t you.) Now I’d settle for being one-handed.
Who am I kidding? Of course I wanna be Neil Gaiman. What writer wouldn’t? If his personal assistant has near-rock star status, it’s because she’s near the real thing. (Not to sell her short – I’m sure she’s a nice and extremely competent person.) I’d put up with a hoard of rabid lawn-sitters if I could visit the Doctor Who set and schmooze with the cast. I’d even put up with the purple sparkly eyeliner to have a fraction of Neil Gaiman’s talent and energy.
Hey, I already have his hair. Except dark blond. And more like Tom Baker’s hair than Neil’s. But still.
I got the idea for this entry weeks ago, before I had a blog or was even mentally committed (obvious remarks aside) to having a blog. When I went to SiWC and became convinced, for the second year in a row, that I should start a blog, I knew that this piece would be one of my first posts.
I wanna be Neil Gaiman’s personal assistant.
I know, you’d think I’d wanna be Neil Gaiman, himself. Who wouldn’t want to be the mind behind vividly inventive films? The author of multiple internationally best-selling novels? The creator of the ambitious, barrier-breaking, award-winning Sandman comic book – excuse me – graphic novel series? Who would turn down sitting on Sue Ellen’s falafel on Arthur? Or writing (I’m not kidding, here) an episode of Doctor Who?
Even in the face of all that brilliance, fame, and glory, I’d still rather be Neil Gaiman’s personal assistant.
See, if I were Neil Gaiman, I’d be forced to wear black all the time. I’d have to talk with a funny accent. My dinner guests would have to be picked up at some neutral location and transported to my house with velvet bags over their heads; otherwise, I’d wake up one morning to find throngs of rabid fans tented up on my lawn, with “<3” “U” painted on their eye lids in purple sparkly eye liner. (Please don’t do the latter to Mr. Gaiman. It was my idea, first.)
But if I were Mr. Gaiman’s personal assistant, I’d reap some of the benefits without any of the pressures. I’d get to meet some of those cool and/or famous people he hangs out with. I’d be first (or nearly first) in line for his latest publications. I would have been sent to Ireland in October to enjoy the music, the green hills, the especially good beer, and the near rock-star status of attending a science fiction convention as his representative.
Best of all, if I were Neil Gaiman’s personal assistant, I’d get to listen to that funny accent all the time.
***
If you like Neil Gaiman’s stories and wish to help a young film maker on a cool project, then check out Kickstarter. Christopher Salmon is hoping to make an animated film of “The Price.” More info is available at the website for The Price.
I’ve always thought it would be fun to have a weekly column in a newspaper. Interesting and amusing ideas float into my head all the time. I like the challenge of fitting ideas together coherently. (Maybe this isn’t as challenging for others as it is for me). A newspaper column would give me a chance to find out if other people find those floating ideas as interesting and amusing as I do.
Blogging is like a newspaper column, except without an editor to tell you what to write, that you’ve misspelled something, that your article is too long, or that you’ve missed a deadline. Blogging is complete freedom, within reasonable boundaries. It’s only natural that I’ve been toying with the possibility of blogging ever since the word “blog” started circulating around the internet a decade or so ago.
Only one thing stopped me from trying that new blogging fad, all those years ago. Okay, two things. Three. Three things stopped me.
First, and perhaps least important, there was no money in blogging. These days, I imagine some people are profiting off of their blogs. But back in the day, bloggers spent hours (okay, minutes…seconds, at least) polishing their innermost thoughts. Then they dumped the priceless nuggets out into the internet for anyone to read and discuss (or judge, mock, or ridicule – reason #4 not to blog). And they did it for free. This did not make sound economical or psychological sense to me, back then.
Time was a much bigger reason not to blog. Sure, I could just blat out the first sentences that formed in my head and not worry too much about transitions, organization, word choice, and all that writerly junk. But who would read such a mess? And if they did read it . . . well, see reason #4 not to blog.
Writing is easy. Writing well is hard. It takes time. I have multiple jobs, multiple kids, multiple cats, a really sweet and understanding husband, and novels to write. Blogging is just a big, black hole of time.
Isn’t it?
The biggest reason I never started blogging was fear. What do I have to say that anyone else would want to read? I’d feed valuable time, creativity, and resources into my blog and the only ones reading it would be my parents (and maybe my husband, if I ask him nicely to proofread).
When you write a novel, you spend months or years without exposing your work to total strangers. During that time, you can survive off of the fantasy that, some day, an editor will love it and publish it and it will become an international best seller and be made into a movie starring Shia LaBeouf and Michael Caine and you will be a millionaire. A blog can result in instantaneous criticism (see reason #4). Worse, silence.
Total disinterest can be bad for a writer’s motivation.
With all these reasons NOT to blog, why have I just spent the entire day setting up this big, black hole of time? It goes back to the first paragraph. Writing is like a puzzle game with few boundaries and rules, where the definition of “winning” is subjective. In other words, it’s fun. And it turns out I crave feedback a little more often than every few months (or years).
So this is it: my first blog entry. Be kind.
Be there, at all.
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